Model Soldier by Cat Johnson

Summary: When love presents itself, take your shot. Red, Hot, & Blue, Book 8When Emily Price is assigned to an ad campaign featuring one of Uncle Sam’s finest soldiers, she’s thrilled. Who better to break up the monotonous parade of smooth, perfect models than a rough, war-hardened alpha male?

Maybe she’ll even get lucky like one of her colleagues and find romance. Unfortunately, when she meets her model, he’s more caveman than Prince Charming. Now her dreams of love—and her career—are dangling precariously from his callused fingertips.

Staff Sergeant David Hawk Hawkins never imagined refusing a command…until he loses a bet and is ordered off the battlefield and into a new role: poster boy for the Army’s recruiting campaign.

From the start, their relationship is more fire-and-ice than fairytale. Yet beneath their sparring simmers an attraction that finally explodes into a night of lovemaking that, after they part, haunts them to opposite sides of the globe.

But love isn’t through with them—and neither is the public. The campaign is a hit and Hawk becomes a star. Soon he and Emily are thrown together again, but this time it’s on Hawk’s turf, where flying bullets could settle their battle before it begins.

Product WarningsContains sex hot enough to travel halfway around the world, and a love strong enough to bring them back home again

Review:

Yeah, yeah. I read some smut and I liked it, the fun of a silly romance. I read some smut just to try it, I hope my prudy friend don’t mind it. *coughs* Obviously, my skills as a lyricist need work, but hehe, I had no idea this genre could be so hilarious. I mean, when I thought of dirty books before, the lameness that isFifty Shades was always the first thing that came to mind, but now, thank you Model Soldier for demonstrating how laugh out loud funny random fucking can be.

I think my face was contorted somewhere between Cheshire cat grin and Joker induced hysterics after I finished this. Why? The stereotypes in this book are just utterly ridiculous – I was going to call the whole thing unbelievably unrealistic before I was suddenly reminded of the Petraeus affair, now it all feels crassly appropriate. For one, Emily Price is hilarious. Hmm, let’s see, she’s mid twenties, single, and so jealous that her coffee addicted boss is now engaged to some military guy that she’s… I’ll just let the following quote do the explaining for me:

Feeling spiteful, Emily went to pour herself a nice, big steaming cup of caffeinated coffee. As payback she intended to drink it right in front of Katie. That would teach her boss for hogging the hot military men for herself.

You know, I’ve always criticized delusional characters before, but Emily’s just so unbelievably out there that no reasonable woman can act like she does, right? Fuck, I sure hope so, I don’t know what’d happen if there were actually whole plane fulls of desperate single women thinking of marrying the complete stranger they were going to meet at their destination. Because, like Emily explains to one of her coworkers, what they’re actually supposed to be doing is:

“I am here to work, not find men.”

Nah, that apparently slips her mind the minute she gets her assignment and it doesn’t take her more than two days (after a bizarre series of hot and cold moments) before she decides to go all Paula Broadwell.

Emily though is really only half the appeal of the book, because, unlike many a shallow hot slash cold romance I’ve criticized in the past, Model Soldier actually has a plot! It’s not complicated or anything, but I do appreciate Cat Johnson not only actually writing combat scenes with apparently some research but also coming up with an honest to goodness reason why Emily and Hawk would even be together (not ‘be together’) in the first place – even if Emily’s written, again, as a horny delusional madwoman. Plus, the army bits first with Hawk training his men and then shipping out to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, believe it or not, actually gave him half decent character development – a tough guy with flaws – that provided an almost perfect foil for the certifiable Emily, who apparently ‘wouldn’t know what to do with a real manly man when she came across one’ *cough* icwutudidthar *cough*.

I have to admit, almost the entirety of this book was a lot of fun. Even if Hawk has more than a few caveman moments. Even if one of Hawk’s guys is written like:

Perhaps with her covered up a bit, Wally would be able to avoid drooling on her during the ceremony.

Even if Emily and Hawk have a crazy sex scene on a desk in the middle of an Army base that I wouldn’t have found believable until late this year. Even if, heck, especially since the Taliban get involved. But then Emily has to fall for the oldest trick in the book, one I’ve probably seen used in half a dozen other ‘romances’ this year, and my reaction to the last few chapters was just a very weak meh.

But yes, in this case, crazy stereotypes are hilarious. The sex never got in the way of the plot, character, or relationship development. *clears throat* Model Soldier is not bad at all.